HK & Macau - Amazing IslandsDec 13, 2005
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trams, buses, and taxis oh my!
fishing boats
freedom bus
Right now we are in a nice hotel room in Guiin watching a documentary on China between 1931-1945 leading up to the massacre at Nanjing by Japanese Army. This part of history is very important in China as we have heard about this battle in several different cities by many people. There was even a demonstration recently in a Chinese city with large banners stating "Don't forget history." We watched the first of a six part mini-series here on Chinese television.
After that the nightly news opened with the WTO conference in Hong Kong. While in HK we met several people involved with the WTO conference at various tourist sites. The next story is about the ongoing ASEAN conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia welcoming S. Korea into the community. Over the last 5 weeks we have become much more familiar with a few of the major news stories over here, including the large toxic chemical spill at a major Chinese chemical plant.
During our stay in Hong Kong we wanted to get away from the skyscrapers, expensive German automobiles, and Louis Vutton botiques so we took a weekend trip to Macau. Although Macau is an island only 1 hr away by ferry, we had to go through immigration to enter the island. Macau is a very unique island since it was under Portuguese colonialism for several centuries. All signs were written in Portuguese and Cantonese with some in English. It was difficult to know who spoke what language over there. And the few words of Mandarin we had learned didn't apply there. We enjoyed our quiet weekend in Macau by treating ourselves to Portuguese cuisine and pastries.
At the start of the flight back to mainland China we picked up 2 english newspapers: the Hong Kong news and the South China Daily, but at the end of the flight the attendants collected the papers stating those publications were not allowed on the mainland.
We are on our last couple of days in China before heading to Vietnam this week and I think we might miss some things like the hospitality (although sometimes it was a bit awkward), the celebrity status we occasionally obtained and the cold weather (we hope!)
